HAITI ADVENTURES.

Shannon News, 5 September 1924, Page 4

HAITI ADVENTURES.

EXPERIENCES IN-THE NEGRO REPUBLIC. After several weeks - -in Haiti, a negro island in the West Indies; 'Lady'' Dorothy Mills, the- beautiful and adventurous daughter of the Earl of Oxford, and wife'of Captain Arthiir Mills returned to London recently. The preliminary stages of the trip included six days in a Dutch cargo boat from Jamaica to Haiti, but the* end of the journey had a brief prelude in Paris, where tlhe young explorer bought some new clothes. "When I reached Haiti,”' Lady Dorothy told a representative of the Daily Chronicle, "I found that I had been.advertised as making, the* trip in order to investigate cannibalism. People said I believed human beings * ate each other in the • streets. * I was: - sent for by the President, but when it was known that my: object in visiting the island was simply to study the psychology of the people I was forgiven, and made welcome everywhere. “It was extraordinarily .-interesting to live almost wholly among negroes for a considerable time. 11 With the exception of Liberia, Haiti *is the L only negro republic* in the'world. I was * especially anxious to discover whether negroes have in them germs of a great : people. I think they have in them the makings of a fine race, but they lack a certain something rather hard to describe. Perhaps I might "call it coherence, or concentration. “The upper classes speak'French. Their ideal is French civilisation. The country is civilised. Art is good, literature notl at ail bad. There are very few whites in - Haiti, and; they are mostly Americans. I went up country, but found the offering of sacrifice very rare. The practice of Roman Catholicism is spreading, and the old superstitions are dying out. I saw pigs and chickens offered, but that was all. “The greati passion in Haiti is danc- . ing. Most nights I danced until 6 o’clock in the morning. -The-fox-trot is danced, and also a variation of the tango, which is called the ‘Meringue.’ It is common to see the-negroes dance until they are in such a state of exhaustion that they fall to the -floor. Haiti is extremely poor. Very littleis exported. The native 1 classes five* on what they ar© able to grow.” Lady Dorothy added that she found some excellent material for a plot* for her" next novel.